The ilmiye (ʿilmiyye) was the Ottoman Empire's official Islamic religious establishment, which comprised jurists trained in medrese s ( madrasa , religious college), especially those located in the Ottoman Turkish-speaking world and particularly, from the late tenth/sixteenth century, the graded medrese s of Istanbul. Individuals with medrese schooling were qualified to be müderris es ( mudarris, medrese professor), kadı s ( qāḍī , Islamic court judge), müftü s ( muftī , expert jurisprudent), or vaiz es ( wāʿiẓ , Friday mosque preacher), and all who met the educational criteria, regardless of where they had received their